So many people are asking if we are excited about our trip...... I think most of us have mixed feelings, but I can tell you for a fact that I can hardly wait to get on that plane.
When Kim and I came home from China last year, we knew for sure that we wanted to go back and take our own team with us. Spending time at Morning Star felt like fulfilling a calling of sorts - it satisfied me deep in my soul, yet it was difficult and painful. We cried so much!! Yet we laughed, and loved and cuddled too. As our time to start planning this trip drew close, I began to feel a great sense of anxiety, which frightened me. I was really thinking "can I do this again, all those powerful emotions, then the difficulty of coming back to my life after doing something so meaningful...?" It is certainly easier to do nothing, than to do something this wonderful and difficult.
So you may be wondering why I keep saying that it is difficult? It isn't the long, sleepless nights that are difficult, with the babies crying, or the changing of diapers, feeding of bottles, taking of temperatures. It's the loving, the truly allowing God to speak deep into my heart, to move me to care deeply, that hurts so much. It's really hard to go there for me, it's easier to pretend that these children who need families don't exist, that we don't really know the people who work tirelessly for them day in and day out, it's easy to ignore them. Well now we do know, these children, these lovely people..... and we can't forget. I still cry when I think about it all, and not just in China, around the world. Our world is full of hurting lonely, dying people, and those who love Jesus and are doing something about it. I just need to be doing something too, how can I not? What really matters is not how hard it is for us to do something, but what God is going to say when I stand before Him, about the good that I knew I had to do, and what I did about it........
I read an article yesterday that stated that it is not good for people to volunteer with orphans for two weeks then just leave, because it's too hard for these children to form so many attachments that are not permanent and constantly have to be broken. So what then, it's better not to give our love at all, it's better not to hold them and allow God to show us himself through a little broken child? Jesus had time for children, he touched them and blessed them, even though the disciples shewed them away. How can we not give our love to the least of these when God has given us so much..... because "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for ME." Matt. 25:40
When Kim and I came home from China last year, we knew for sure that we wanted to go back and take our own team with us. Spending time at Morning Star felt like fulfilling a calling of sorts - it satisfied me deep in my soul, yet it was difficult and painful. We cried so much!! Yet we laughed, and loved and cuddled too. As our time to start planning this trip drew close, I began to feel a great sense of anxiety, which frightened me. I was really thinking "can I do this again, all those powerful emotions, then the difficulty of coming back to my life after doing something so meaningful...?" It is certainly easier to do nothing, than to do something this wonderful and difficult.
So you may be wondering why I keep saying that it is difficult? It isn't the long, sleepless nights that are difficult, with the babies crying, or the changing of diapers, feeding of bottles, taking of temperatures. It's the loving, the truly allowing God to speak deep into my heart, to move me to care deeply, that hurts so much. It's really hard to go there for me, it's easier to pretend that these children who need families don't exist, that we don't really know the people who work tirelessly for them day in and day out, it's easy to ignore them. Well now we do know, these children, these lovely people..... and we can't forget. I still cry when I think about it all, and not just in China, around the world. Our world is full of hurting lonely, dying people, and those who love Jesus and are doing something about it. I just need to be doing something too, how can I not? What really matters is not how hard it is for us to do something, but what God is going to say when I stand before Him, about the good that I knew I had to do, and what I did about it........
I read an article yesterday that stated that it is not good for people to volunteer with orphans for two weeks then just leave, because it's too hard for these children to form so many attachments that are not permanent and constantly have to be broken. So what then, it's better not to give our love at all, it's better not to hold them and allow God to show us himself through a little broken child? Jesus had time for children, he touched them and blessed them, even though the disciples shewed them away. How can we not give our love to the least of these when God has given us so much..... because "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for ME." Matt. 25:40
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